Anonymous United States officials are claiming that the FBI has foiled a plot by ISIS-K to carry out an act of terrorism on Election Day.
According to NBC News, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, who had worked for the CIA in Afghanistan, was arrested by the FBI last week in Oklahoma over an alleged terror plot. According to court documents, Tawhedi had allegedly spoken to a man named "Malik" over his intent to purchase AK-47s.
On Sept. 14, per the court document, Tawhedi and a "co-conspirator" met with an undercover FBI agent and two confidential human sources to purchase guns. On Oct. 7, Tawhedi and the co-conspirator were arrested as part of an FBI sting operation.
The court document goes on to add that as part of his post-arrest interview, Tawhedi said he planned to purchase firearms "for the purpose of conducting firearms training and committing an attack (using the firearms) on Election Day targeting large gatherings of people, during which he and [co-conspirator] expected to be martyred."
The day after Tawhedi's arrest, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum claimed there's been a resurgence of the Islamic State group known as well as an increase in right-wing extremism.
"Today's Islamic State is not the force it was a decade ago, but after a few years of being pinned well back, they've resumed their efforts to export terrorism," he stated. The deadly March concert hall attack in Moscow, he then stated, carried out by offshoot ISIS-K, "was a "brutal demonstration of its capability."
McCallum concluded his press conference with a warning to would-be terrorists, stating that if one takes money from Iran or Russia to carry out terrorist acts in the U.K., "It's a choice you'll regret."
NBC had asked the FBI about the extent of ISIS-K's involvement regarding the alleged Election Day plot, but the FBI refused to answer.
Tawhedi worked as a security guard for the CIA in Afghanistan and arrived in the U.S. in September 2021 on a special immigrant visa after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. He passed two rounds of vetting, and no derogatory information was detected during the process. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked on Oct. 10 about the Election Day plot, refused to answer, saying it's an "active investigation."